Why?

[roverbarmy]

I drive funeral cars for a living. Last week we had a "tuned" car tried to overtake the cortege on a single carriageway. He had passed three or four cars before he realised what we were and saw that another car was heading towards him, rounding the bend ahead. He forced his way in between the hearse and the limousine and continued there for about half a mile down the road until we reached the dual carriageway where he drove slowly past the hearse. Time to reflect?????

[sjc]

Quiet a bizarre thread in many ways. Some random thoughts....

1. In my 33 years of driving, I've seen more bad driving, accidents and near misses caused by doddering old fools, half-awake-in-a-rush school-run mums, drivers watching sat navs stuck in the middle of their windscreen instead of watching the road, poor eyesight in the dark, drink driving, rear fog lights in the rain, lack of confidence and God knows what else rather than I've ever seen by someone in a "souped up" car. It's just that the souped car causes the self righteous to shake their heads.

2.The ability for a car to go fast isn't really relevant,30 in a 20 zone is quite likely more dangerous than 80 in a NSL.

3.My Noble M400 currently has a power to weight ratio of significantly over 400BHP Per ton, roughly what the Maclaren MP4-12C runs. For comparision, my V6 Rover 75 has about 120 BHP per ton. There will be plenty of times that I can drive the 75 quicker than I can the Noble due to road conditions, but the flip side is that the Noble's brakes ( lack of ABS aside) are several leagues up in performance for obvious reasons. So we could ask the question, why aren't all braking systems designed pull a car to a halt from warp speeds ( wheel size dependent of course),rather than just adequate?.

4: Whatever happened to personal choice? I someone wants 300BHP from their 1.8 so be it. It's not for me, and it'll probably be a horrible on/off power delivery and last 5 minutes, but it's not my car so good luck to him.

5:Give me a well maintained tuned car over a poorly maintained standard car every day of the week

5: At the end of the day, it's the idiot behind the wheel that causes problems. Very few accidents are caused by someone driving at 180mph because their car does 180mph. 60 mph on the wrong road will always be 60 mph on the wrong road, whether your in a standard car/tuned car/super car or hyper car.

[roverbarmy]

It's not the tuning which causes the problems it's the nuts on the steering wheels.

[sjc]

Originally Posted by murphyv310

Just a few weeks ago I saw what must have been the worst driving for a very long time. A nearly new Porsche was jumping in and out of a line of cars, the driver was cutting it far too fine and oncoming cars including myself had to brake or there would have been an accident. This was blatent bad driving and the situation of being a prat with too many horses.

So the driver would have been less of a prat if he had less horses?
He was a prat, full stop.

[murphyv310]

Originally Posted by sjc

Quiet a bizarre thread in many ways. Some random thoughts....

1. In my 33 years of driving, I've seen more bad driving, accidents and near misses caused by doddering old fools, half-awake-in-a-rush school-run mums, drivers watching sat navs stuck in the middle of their windscreen instead of watching the road, poor eyesight in the dark, drink driving, rear fog lights in the rain, lack of confidence and God knows what else rather than I've ever seen by someone in a "souped up" car. It's just that the souped car causes the self righteous to shake their heads.
.

Oh yes I've seen all of those as has many other drivers I'm sure. I've seen two fatal accidents during my 43 years driving, and both involved "fast" cars. The first was in 1973, at the time I had a Mini 850, I was driving on the A71 between Strathaven and Stonehouse, I was about 400 yards from the roundabout outside Stonehouse when a Cooper "S" overtook me, the lad that was driving literally had no chance it was total madness he would never have had the time to brake for the RB or properly see around the curve especially on the wrong side of the road. He indeed crashed and hit a lorry on the RB. I was first on the scene bar the lorry driver the lad who was in his early 20's was dead, I still see this like it was yesterday.
Now its not the fault of the car but massive stupidity of the driver that resulted in his death. I wonder though if he was in a lesser car would he have driven like that? Who knows.
The other accident was driver stupidity of not knowing when and where to use the loud pedal. It was about 10 years ago on the A9 I was in a fairly long queue of cars about to join a dual carriageway stretch from a few miles of single carriageway. I was in no hurry and not itching to overtake, a car three or for cars in front indicated and pulled out only a few yards into the dual carriageway at that point a Merc (AMG possibly I dont remember) flew passed and for some reason didn't see the other car that had already pulled out, it was rear ended, I've never seen or heard anything like it, total carnage, myself and some other cars were very lucky but the accident involved four vehicles in total. The driver of the Merc was charged with dangerous driving and the passenger of the rear ended car which I think was a Peugeot 205 was seriously injured, died later in hospital.
Ok again driver stupidity but in a less powerful car would that accident have happened?
No I'm not saying its the fast cars fault, take a risk with a lot of BHP and speed and it could land you in deep water.

[murphyv310]

Originally Posted by sjc

So the driver would have been less of a prat if he had less horses?
He was a prat, full stop.

Hi.
Indeed he WAS a prat, snag is with a lot of horses he's using those horses in the wrong way, a bad driver with a powerful car is a menace.

[sjc]

Originally Posted by murphyv310

Hi.
Indeed he WAS a prat, snag is with a lot of horses he's using those horses in the wrong way, a bad driver with a powerful car is a menace.

As is a bad driver with a car that couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.
In fact, using your example above of the driver overtaking on the wrong side of the road, you could even have the argument that he would spend less time on the wrong side of the road in an even MORE powerful car (just playing Devils advocate here), so would in fact be safer !.
A bad driver is simply a bad driver. Every time you get in a car, you're in a loaded weapon. Where you aim it and how you use it dictates whether you get to your destination safely.

[murphyv310]

Originally Posted by sjc

As is a bad driver with a car that couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.
In fact, using your example above of the driver overtaking on the wrong side of the road, you could even have the argument that he would spend less time on the wrong side of the road in an even MORE powerful car (just playing Devils advocate here), so would in fact be safer !.
A bad driver is simply a bad driver. Every time you get in a car, you're in a loaded weapon. Where you aim it and how you use it dictates whether you get to your destination safely.

Hi.
Em, I do and don't see your reasoning here. He is (was) obviously a bad driver and yes he "may" be able to power out of a problem but he could also misjudge the situation and be the cause of an accident which is highly likely as he is obviously only thinking of showing off "see what I can do" until he comes a cropper! What i saw that day could have been far worse. if he had tried to push in on a car that was too close to the vehicle in front due to misjudgement of the speed of an oncoming vehicle, that could have resulted in an accident, if he hit the brakes again another accident scenario. Give me a doddery old driver any day as they just wont get into that situation.
At the end of the day my reason for the OP is not to have a "go" at powerful cars, I find the technology wonderful and some of the cars awesome, I would love to be able to afford a new Jag, Porsche or a McLaren. My concern and its not really related to 75's & ZT's is the number of people that go so wild with power and have little consideration for uprating the chassis, brakes and other safety items. There's also a goodly number of modified cars that don't have proper insurance. My wife was nearly killed two years ago by a Subaru Imprezza (could have been any car though) that drove through a Red light on a crossing and that was in the middle of the town! She now hates cars with loud exhausts and actually is quite nervous of them.

[sjc]

It's strange though, in as much that with the Noble having no driver aids whatsoever ( no ABS,no traction control no EBD etc etc) I tend to drive it probably with more circumspect than the company van, or the 75. I'm a firm believer that although as you say tech' is wonderful, I do sometimes think that if every steering wheel had a spike pointing at the driver everyone would actually become a better more aware driver.
In todays modern cocooned, airbagged, reinforced braking,distance related cruise controlled technically amazing cars ( tanks in some cases!), it's very easy to think you can't be hurt, and hence even easier to switch off and become a tad careless.
I can see all points on this thread.

[d_a_n1979]

Originally Posted by Polly

In a word "yes"😳

State why?

I've ZERO points and never had any

I've got ultra low insurance on both cars and that's with both myself & the wife on the policy, fully comp and everything covered

Just because I choose to have a car with more than enough BHP doesn't give ANYONE the right to say whether it's right for me to have that or not!

If YOU don't agree with it then fair enough, but it'd be better if you kept you gob shut and comments to yourself

Righteous muppets are generally 99% jealous!

**That's me done on here; over the last few weeks there've been too many idiots spouting off thinking that they're bang on the nose with what they say but it still turns round on them and backfires...

I'll post on here if I need advice on issues etc but other than that I cant be ***** with it anymore...

Feel sorry for the folk on here who make the forum interesting and a pleasure to be part of it...